Thursday, October 20, 2011

We must never forget the Marcos years

Journalist Veronica Pedrosa explores her personal history and how it intertwines with Imelda Marcos and the history of the Philippines.

It's a good refresher for those who 'miss' martial law and who have forgotten what it really meant, as well as an essential video for the young ones who were born after Edsa.

Once you get past the laughable, pitiable figure that Imelda now cuts, remember that she is one half of the conjugal dictatorship, the dictatorship that brought the Philippines deep into a hole out of which it still has not extricated itself.

No one from the Marcos years has ever been punished. Most of what has been plundered has never been returned to the Filipino people. Nor have any apologies ever been made.

Cut to several decades after the fall of the dictatorship and you have the Ampatuans massacring the Mangudadatus and their protective cover of journalists in the worst politically-motivated crime in Philippine history and you'll see that not much has changed: people in power still do what they can to maintain it -- and while justice grinds inexorably slowly, no one has been convicted two years after the deed.

Now the Marcoses are back in Ilocos, Leyte and the Senate. They are on a slow but sure ascent up the halls of power, all the way to the presidency perhaps. If it happens, it will be because our collective memory has failed us and because our tendency to forgive has outweighed our desire to punish those who have done wrong.